When you send an automated sequence of emails, such as onboarding emails or an email course, it is most common to have a set number of days between each email. You might send the first email on day 1, the second on day 2, the third on day 4 and so on.

But what if you want to give your subscribers the option to get the next email sooner than the prescribed sequence? This is especially beneficial for educational email courses, where the subscriber might want to go through the emails at their own pace rather than waiting.

The easiest way to handle this is to include a link at the end of each email, that will trigger the next email. If the subscriber clicks the link, they get the email right away. If they don’t click the link, they’ll get the email when it’s next sent as part of the sequence settings.

Sounds simple enough?

This is one area where there is a big difference in setting it up between ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign.

Let’s dive into how you can pull this off in both.

ActiveCampaign

You can build all of this in one automation in ActiveCampaign by using wait conditions.

Wait conditions in ActiveCampaign’s automations have two options:

  1. Wait for a specific period of time
  2. Wait until a specific condition is met

If you choose the second option, wait until a specific condition is met, you’ll get the option for “Has clicked on a link”. This means, the automation will wait at this condition until the subscriber clicks on the link. You can set a time frame for how long it waits so that you don’t up waiting forever.

In this example, it is checking if someone has clicked on the link in the last 3 days. I’ve also set the option to continue the automation if conditions are not met within 2 days. I have set this one to be shorter just to be certain there is never a time when it is still waiting, but it is no longer checking if they clicked on the link.

When a subscriber clicks the link, this wait condition will be satisfied, and they will move to the next step in the automation. This is to send the next email.

The full automation is relatively simple, with an email and wait condition for each part of the sequence.

ConvertKit

It requires more set up to do this in ConvertKit. You’ll need an automation and multiple sequences.

One of the limitations of ConvertKit is that it doesn’t allow you to send emails directly from automations. So you have to send automated emails from sequences.

Usually, you’d have all emails for a series in one sequence in ConvertKit. But sequences have the number of days between each email baked in, and there is no way to give the subscriber the control over when they get the next one.

To get around this, you need to split the emails into multiple sequences, with one email per sequence.

Here’s an example from my ConvertKit Crash Course, with four sequences.

You’ll then need to set up trigger links, which are the links that give people the option to get the next email right away. When someone clicks on the trigger link, a tag is added.

The automation then must check for that tag. It does this by having a goal. If the subscriber clicks on the link, the tag is added and the automation will jump to the goal. The next step after the goal is to add them to the next sequence, which will send the next email.

If they don’t click the link, the automation will wait for 24 hours. After 24 hours, it will automatically give them a different tag. There is a goal for that tag as well. The result is, the automation will jump to the goal after 24 hours, if the subscriber doesn’t click on the link first.

This solution in ConvertKit does the job, but as you can see from the screenshots, it has many more steps than the ActiveCampaign solution.

Wrapping up

ConvertKit is a wonderful tool that prides itself on offering a simple and to the point solution. This works well in plenty of cases. This is an example where that simplicity actually complicates the solution.

ActiveCampaign is the more powerful and flexible tool. As a result, you can build the solution for this use case with a lot less moving parts. This is because ActiveCampaign has:

  • the ability to send emails directly from automations, so no need for multiple sequences
  • wait steps can check for link clicks, so no need for additional rules

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